In a manufacturing process for a semiconductor device or a liquid crystal display device, a processing of supplying a processing liquid to a surface of a substrate, such as a semiconductor wafer or a glass substrate for a liquid crystal display panel, to clean the substrate surface with the processing liquid, etc., are performed.
For example, a substrate processing apparatus that performs a single substrate processing type cleaning processing of cleaning a substrate one by one includes a spin chuck that rotates the substrate while holding the substrate substantially horizontally by a plurality of chuck pins and a processing liquid nozzle arranged to supply a processing liquid to a front surface of the substrate rotated by the spin chuck.
In processing the substrate, the substrate is rotated by the spin chuck. A chemical solution is then supplied from the nozzle to the front surface of rotating substrate. The chemical solution supplied onto the front surface of the substrate receives a centrifugal force due to the rotation of the substrate and flows along the front surface of the substrate toward the peripheral edge. The chemical solution is thereby supplied to the entire front surface of the substrate and processing of the front surface of the substrate by the chemical solution is achieved. After the processing by the chemical solution, a rinsing processing for rinsing off the chemical solution attached to the substrate by pure water is performed. That is, pure water is supplied from the processing liquid nozzle onto the front surface of the substrate that is being rotated by the spin chuck and by the pure water spreading upon receiving the centrifugal force due to the rotation of the substrate, the chemical solution attached to the front surface of the substrate is rinsed off. After the rinsing processing, the speed of rotation of the substrate by the spin chuck is increased to perform a spin drying processing of spinning off the pure water attached to the substrate to dry (see Patent Literature 1 indicated below).